The Prophet of Berkeley Square. Robert Hichens

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СКАЧАТЬ was a Thursday afternoon.

      “I don’t know about by chance,” rejoined the young librarian, his literary sense again coming into play. “But it’s—”

      At this moment the library door opened, and a tall, thin, middle-aged man walked in sideways with his feet very much turned out to right and left of him.

      “Any letters, Frederick Smith?” he said in a hollow voice, on reaching the counter.

      “Two, Mr. Sagittarius, I believe,” replied the young librarian, moving with respectful celerity towards the letter rack.

      The Prophet started and looked eagerly at the newcomer. His eyes rested upon an individual whose face was comic in outline with a serious expression, and whose form suggested tragic farce dressed to represent commonplace, as seen at Margate and elsewhere. A top hat, a spotted collar, a pink shirt, a white satin tie, a chocolate brown frock coat, brown trousers and boots, and a black overcoat thrown open from top to bottom—these appurtenances, clerkly in their adherence to a certain convention, could not wholly disguise the emotional expression that seems sometimes to lurk in shape. The lines of Mr. Sagittarius defied their clothing. His shoulders gave the lie to the chocolate brown frock coat. His legs breathed defiance to the trousers that sheathed them. One could, in fancy, see the former shrugged in all the abandonment of third-act despair, behold the latter darting wildly for the cover afforded by a copper, a cupboard, or any other friendly refuge of those poor victims of ludicrous and terrific circumstance who are so sorely smitten and afflicted upon the funny stage.

      Mr. Sagittarius, in fine, seemed a man dressed in a mask that was unable to deceive. His lean face was almost absurd in its irregularity, its high cheek-bones and deep depressions, its sharp nose, extensive mouth and nervous chin. But the pale blue eyes that were its soul shone plaintively beneath their shaggy, blonde eyebrows, and even an application of pomade almost hysterically lavish could not entirely conceal the curling gloom of the heavy, matted hair.

      “Yes, two, Mr. Sagittarius,” cried the young librarian, approaching from the rack.

      The gentleman held out a hand covered with a yellow dogskin glove.

      “Thank you, Frederick Smith,” he said.

      And he turned to leave the building. But the Prophet intercepted him.

      “Excuse me,” said the Prophet. “I beg your pardon, but—but—” he looked at the young librarian and accidentally let the half sovereign fall on the counter. It gave the true ring. “I believe I heard you mention—let drop the name Mr. Sagittarius.”

      “I don’t know about let drop,” began the youth in his usual revising manner. “But I—”

      At this point the gentleman in question began to move rather hastily sideways towards the door. The Prophet followed him up and got before him near the letter rack, while the young librarian retrieved the half sovereign and bit it with his teeth.

      “I really beg your pardon,” said the Prophet, while Mr. Sagittarius stood still in the violent attitude of one determined to dodge so long as he has breath. “I am not at all in the habit of”—Mr. Sagittarius dodged—“of intruding upon strangers—” Mr. Sagittarius dodged again with such extraordinary abruptness and determination that he nearly caused the young librarian to swallow the Prophet’s golden bribe. “I see you don’t believe me,” the Prophet continued, flushing pink but still holding his ground, and indeed trying to turn Mr. Sagittarius’s flank by a strategic movement of almost military precision. “I see that plainly, but—” Mr. Sagittarius ducked to the left, endeavouring to cover the manoeuvre by an almost simultaneous and extremely passionate feint towards the Prophet’s centre, which was immediately withdrawn in good order—“but your remark—arkable name, Saag—itt-ittarius, suggested to me that you are rea-eally the man I seek.”

      He had now got Mr. Sagittarius into a very awkward bit of country between the letter P. in the rack, under which reposed Miss Partridge’s correspondence, and the newspaper bureau, with the counter immediately on his rear, and taking advantage of this circumstance, he continued rapidly:

      “May I ask whether you recently received a letter—one moment!—envelope—crest—I only want to know if you have received—only—an elephant rampant—swarm of—of bees—”

      “I have never received a rampant elephant and a swarm of bees,” cried Mr. Sagittarius with every symptom of unbridled terror. “Help, Frederick Smith!”

      “Right you are, Malkiel the Second!” cried the young librarian, hastily pocketing the half sovereign and making a feverish lunge at nothing in particular over the counter. “Right you are!”

      “Malkiel the Second!” ejaculated the Prophet. “Then you are the man I seek.”

      Malkiel the Second—for it was indeed he—sank back against the counter in an attitude of abandoned prostration that would have made a fortune of a comic actor.

      “I trusted to Jellybrand’s,” he said, drawing from his tail pocket a white handkerchief covered with a pattern of pink storks in flight. “I trusted to Jellybrand’s and Jellybrand’s has betrayed me. Oh, Frederick Smith!”

      He put a stork to each eye. The young librarian assumed an injured air.

      “It was the agitation did it, Mr. Sagittarius,” he said. “If you hadn’t a-kep’ dodging I shouldn’t have lost my memory.”

      And he looked avariciously at the Prophet, who smiled at him reassuringly and drew forth a card case.

      “I feel sure, Mr. Sag—Malkiel—”

      “Malkiel the Second, sir, is my name if it is betrayed by Jellybrand’s,” said that gentleman with sudden dignity. “There is no need of any mister.”

      “I beg your pardon,” said the Prophet, handing his card. “That is my name and address. May I beg you to forgive my apparent anxiety to make your acquaintance, and implore you to grant me a few moments of private conversation on a matter of the utmost importance?”

      Malkiel the Second read the card.

      “Berkeley Square,” he said. “The Berkeley Square?”

      “Exactly, the Berkeley Square,” said the Prophet, modestly.

      “Not the one at Brixton Rise behind the Kimmins’s mews?” said Malkiel the Second, suspiciously.

      “Certainly not. The one near Grosvenor Square.”

      “That’s better,” said Malkiel, upon whom the Prophet’s address had evidently made a good impression. “Kimmins’s is no class at all. Had you come from there, I—but what may you want with me?”

      The Prophet glanced significantly at the young librarian, who was leaning upon the counter in a tense, keyhole position, with his private ear turned somewhat ostentatiously towards the two speakers.

      “I can tell you in an inner room,” he murmured, in his most ingratiating manner.

      “You’re certain it’s not Berkeley Square behind Kimmins’s?” said Malkiel, with a last flicker of suspicion.

      “Quite СКАЧАТЬ